We asked a few writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here, the best in essays and criticism.
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Are We Done Hating Television?
NPR’s Linda Holmes, on whether pooh-poohing television makes any sense in a changing digital media landscape.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Berkeley Breathed on the Return of ‘Bloom County’ After 25 Years
An NPR Fresh Air interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist on reviving his comic strip on Facebook, and how social media has changed his relationship with fans.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction
A Fish So Coveted People Have Smuggled, Kidnapped, and Killed For It
The Asian arowana or “dragon fish” is protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to own in the U.S. But the tropical fish’s status symbol among wealthy buyers has made it the object of a thriving black market.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The ’90s Soda that Nobody Cared About Until It Was Dead
Writing for The Believer in February, 2014, Michael Schulman explored one of the most dramatic and memorable failures in American branding: Coca-Cola’s OK Soda. Marketed to Gen X’ers in 1994, the OK Soda brand died by 1995, though its artifacts live on in collector circles and advertising lore.
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Story
A Fish So Coveted People Have Smuggled, Kidnapped, and Killed For It
The Asian arowana or “dragon fish” is protected by the Endangered Species Act and illegal to own in the U.S. But the tropical fish’s status symbol among wealthy buyers has made it the object of a thriving black market.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Do Music Biographies Really Enhance Our Musical Experience?
If [Rhiannon] Giddens were to tell us in a memoir that she’d been thinking about her own child when she sang, it would make the line a poignant narrative moment. But really, what would that reveal that we don’t know from her performance? It might risk drowning out other information we already have: Michael Brown’s […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Cinderella Story’?
To try to figure out what exactly that story is and why we still have it, we have to separate out the folk tale that is Cinderella, though, from the turn of phrase that is “Cinderella story.” Americans will call almost anything a Cinderella story that involves a good thing happening to someone nice. We slap that title on movies and books, but also on basketball games won by tiny schools full of scrawny nerds, small businesses that thrive and even political ascendancies that upend established powers.
Posted inQuotes, Reading List, Top 5
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Our favorite stories of the week, featuring, The Atlantic, California Sunday Magazine, Pacific Standard, a co-investigation by NPR and ProPublica, and The New Yorker.
Posted inFeature, Nonfiction
Our Well-Regulated Militia
Is the conversation around guns in this country really about the right to bear arms?
